Brushes With Fame

[Doug Hess Jr.]

To go along with the thread on the Music section, how about posting pics of memoribilia of famous people NOT in the music business. Heres a picture of my wife and I earlier this year with Jeff Foxworthy. I've got Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy pics too...the soundtrack to their Blue Collar Tour movie is the best!!

I've also interviewed vice president Dick Chaney (sat 5 feet away from him) and sat next to Charlton Heston for 30 minutes for a interview. Got him to record a radio station liner for me with my name mentioned! And I also interviewed Richard Simmons... OK. I could have left that one out!!

[Jamie Tate]

Hey, Jeff cut off his mullet!

[Steve Hoffman]

Doug, I'm sure they enjoyed themselves. You do a good interview!

[Doug Hess Jr.]

Thanks, Steve! I'm am, however, still trying to figure out how to do my next one with you in person. I need to either fly out to California or have you hold an audio summit in Columbus, Ohio so I can drive up (I'm about 2 hours away).

It also helps when the person being interviewed it nice and knowledgeable of their subject like you are, Steve. I hate having to pull information out of people like I'm a dentist battling with a tough tooth.
I just try having a conversation with folks and like Larry King, I don't do much preparation. My goal is not to make myself look good and show how people how much I know about a topic. I've got the actual expert there and I want to ask the questions regular people would ask so they can learn. People hear me all the time. I want to shut up and let the other person talk!!

Doug

[Steve Hoffman]

That's good, Doug. You have the right idea.

But you've been in radio long enough to be able to pull anything from a cold interview by now I'm sure.

[reechie]

I don't have too much non-music memorabilia, but here's the fruits of a couple of fan letters to one of my idols back when I was a kid in the 70's.

Years later, I talked to Steve Stolair, Groucho's secretary during his last years (and the author of a great book about it called Raised Eyebrows), and Steve told me that while he would at times take care of writing the inscriptions, Groucho himself indeed did sign every autograph that they'd send out in response to a fan letter.

[reechie]

And here's the picture I forgot to attach: :rolleyes:

I wish I'd taken better care of them, but I was 11 years old, I'm probably lucky they still exist at all!

[Jamie Tate]

Wow! Are those personalized? That's so great!

I have an autographed picture from a Day at the Races. Groucho, Harpo and Chico signed it and I payed 7 kilobucks for it.

Here's a really bad picture of it.

[Jamie Tate]

I also have a piece of Beethoven's hair. I got it at Sotheby's a few years ago. It's part of that lock the book was written about.

Here's another really bad picture. My vidoe camera doesn't take very nice stills.:(

[Ere]

Originally posted by reechie
And here's the picture I forgot to attach: :rolleyes:

I wish I'd taken better care of them, but I was 11 years old, I'm probably lucky they still exist at all!

Very cool. What does the inscription on the right one say?
BTW, keep those in nice PH-neutral mylar sleeves, in a low humidity/moderate temp room and they should last forever. This place has a good selection: PrintFile (http://www.pfile.com/photostorage/index.html)

Ere

[reechie]

Originally posted by Ere
Very cool. What does the inscription on the right one say?

The story behind that one is, I found out that my birthday is on October 1st, and Groucho's was on October 2nd, so I sent him a birthday card mentioning this. He wrote back "To Rich: Have a Happy Birthday yourself, from Groucho."

Thanks for the archiving advice. I just bought an "Animal Crackers" poster from the '74 reissue that I'm looking into having dry mounted and so forth as well.

[Ere]

No pics to post, but when we lived in upper NW DC there would often be movie premiers at some of the big old movie theaters there, like the Uptown on Connecticut Avenue. We'd be going by, see that a crowd had gathered, and decide on the spur-of-the-moment whether to stop and gawk at the stars.... this led to:

~ having Elisabeth Shue walk over to our side of the aisle and having her stand right in front of me while she preened for the cameras:love:
~ (same premiere) watching Val Kilmer climb through a set of wet hedges on the side and then into a side door to avoid walking down the red carpet
~ seeing JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bisset from about ten feet away....

Ere

[vex]

My brush with fame came when I logged onto a discussion board operated by a well-respected audio engineer and have him respond directly to a query of mine. Oh, wait... :p

Well hell, I used to work in a grocery store in downtown Seattle near a couple of recording studios. We had more than a few local celebs come by to grab cigs/munchies while they were recording and/or hanging out there, including members of Soundgarden, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Mono Men and the Walkabouts. My fave encounter was with Carla Torgerson of the Walkabouts. I've always been a big Walkabouts fan and really dug Carla. It was so cool to meet her in person and she was so sweet and easy to talk to! She wrote a check for her purchase. I was half-tempted to take the check and replace it with cash but I didn't...

[Jeff H.]

My greatest brush with fame. I'm the one in the back third from the left that looks like he just saw God!!:D

[AKA]

Originally posted by Jeff H.
My greatest brush with fame. I'm the one in the back third from the left that looks like he just saw God!!:D

Wow! When was that taken?

[Joel Cairo]

Well, I'm afraid I don't have anything this cool to report.

My Kevin Bacon number is "2", though, if **that** counts for anything... :)

-Kevin

[mne563]

Back in the summer of 1984, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art did a series of programs presenting classic animated cartoons at the Bing Theater in L.A. This series went for 8 or 9 weeks, and each weekend featured a different studio; Disney, Warner Bros., MGM, etc.

Several weekends were devoted to W.B., and this being Los Angeles, lots of the great animators were there in the audience. I'd always loved Friz Freleng's Warner's Brothers stuff. Well, he was there one night, and during the mid-program intermission, I approached him in his seat to ask for an autograph. He said sure, no problem, but he couldn't draw anything because he didn't have his glasses! I remember looking at his wife next to him as she watched him sign my program, and she really seemed to be proud of her husband, impressed that someone wanted his autograph. I asked him if he was enjoying the show, and he said he truly was; he "hadn't seen some of these (cartoons) in many years!"

I quietly went back to my seat, showed my girlfriend, and told her I was probably the only person there who even cared who Friz Freleng was. When I looked up again from my signed program, the entire aisle was filled with Friz fans with the same idea!

(Incidentally, if you ever have the chance to see any classic animation on a true (movie theatre) big screen, please do so. Old cartoons become absolute artwork on a big screen as opposed to a t.v. screen, they are just beautiful).

[mcow1]

For some reason I can't post my pic, says it's too big

[mcow1]

another try.
My boyhood hero, Fess Parker and me a few years ago. Sorry about the size properties says 4x3 inches??

[Jeff H.]

Originally posted by AKA


Wow! When was that taken?


That picture was taken on January 15, 1995(Martin Luther King Day) at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, CA, after one of the greatest concerts I've ever seen!!!

[Bob Lovely]

Friends,

My brushes with fame.....

1) I was interviewed by NBC News in my hometown on my 18th birthday (1969) and the day I registered for the draft. It seems my hometown draft board had a national "rep" as the "send your boy home in a box" draft board. I was interviewed in the late morning and got to watch myself later that day on NBC Nightly News.

2) I sat on a airplane (in the First Class section) next to Johnny Mathis all the way from Minneapolis to San Francisco in 1983. We had numerous enjoyable conversations on the flight and eventhough I recognized him, I never let on I knew who he was. He finally inroduced himself and I never asked for his autograph.

3) I sat and talked to Dion after a show for about 20 minutes. Very nice guy and he shared a numbers of great stories about the early 60's and recording Top 40 hits.

4) At a wedding reception in 1980, I sat next to several members of Cheap Trick at the sit-down dinner. A friend of mine was their Road Manager and he was getting married. Cheap Trick later played (4) sets. Because it was a wedding and people wanted to dance they played covers of '50's and 60's Rock n' Roll classics - very well, I might add. As a sidebar, two years before my friend got married, I dated the Woman he was to eventually marry. I met him after she and I had moved on.

Just a few stories from my life....

Bob:)

[Evan L]

Here goes:

1)Recounted on the Forum before, but I met John Lennon as a child in a restaurant in Manhattan. You hear stories about how John could be rude to fans, but he was great to me and my pop!
2)I met James Taylor in a laundromat here in Burlington, Vermont in 1991. Amazing that someone like JT would be doing his own laundry, but there you go! Very shy man, I must say.
3)Growing up in San Francisco, I worked in a comic book store. There, I met Daryl Hall, who bought a $250 set of Donald Duck comics! A nice guy.
4)Met Susan Sarandon in a mall in Burlington(without her better half). I said, "Loved you in Dead Man Walking", and she smiled prettily and said "Thanks!"

[Mike]

Here's a few:

Hung out with Warren Haynes because he was dating a girl I knew - cool guy.

Somehow Brent Mydland (RIP) ended up at a party I was at after the Dead played nearby. Nice guy.

Got invited backstage to meet Rush when I was 12 because my brother wrote a letter to Alex Lifeson and he wrote back and invited the family to the show. Geddy was super nice.

Met Zakk Wylde a few times - my brother gave him some guitar lessons.

Woke up one morning and found Sebastian Bach sleeping on my living room couch. I slammed cabinets until he woke up - I don't like him. :)

[vex]

I forgot about a couple of other "brushes with fame" that I've had:

1) I saw Randy Bachman when he spoke for a youth event (he was doing the "drugs are bad and I know because I've been there" bit). He autographed a couple of my BTO 8-tracks after the event. Great guy! Told me to go out and buy his solo LP "Survivor". Thanks but no thanks Randy... :sigh:

2) I got to shake hands with Paul Stanley when he was in full make-up and got his autograph on my copy of Kiss Alive II. He was at a Peaches record store plugging the Kiss solo albums.

Sadly I sold off all three items... the 8-tracks when I got rid of that format and the Kiss record when I stopped being a fan of the band. Wish I woulda kept them!

[mne563]

Originally posted by Mike

Woke up one morning and found Sebastian Bach sleeping on my living room couch. I slammed cabinets until he woke up - I don't like him. :)

Sebastian Bach! This is every couch owner's nightmare...